Honduras: The forces behind the coup

The June military coup in Honduras which toppled the lawfully elected administration of President Manuel Zelaya was backed by a coalition of powerful business and media groups which were opposed to social change and any rupture in the country's close military and political ties with the US. The following article provides an insight into the economic and social groups behind the seizure of power.

THE 28 June coup against the administration of President Manuel Zelaya in Honduras ousted the left-wing faction of the Liberal Party (PL), allowing a conservative faction to gain the upper hand. With the support of the main business leaders of the country, who control the media, the right and far right managed, three years after Zelaya was elected president, to take control of the state, a state that they were increasingly losing control of.  The extent to which the US government was aware of the coup plot and the extent to which it participated have yet to be determined. During the Bush administration, the relationship between the US and the Zelaya administration had become increasingly tense, due to the Honduran president's close relationship with firebrand Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez. The confrontation between Zelaya and the far right, the business sector and the media began on the day that Zelaya took office.

An ideological battle

The tensions arose due to Zelaya's increasingly close friendship with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and the countries that have joined the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA), a regional integration project led by Venezuela and Cuba, which the right-wing elite across the region regards as a threat and believes has an ulterior military-political aim.

Zelaya's claims, a few months after taking office in 2006, about right-wing conspiracies to destabilise his government presaged an increasingly close relationship with Chavez, which culminated in Honduras' decision to join ALBA in October 2008. From that point onwards, the rumours of a coup plot began and it was clear that there was a rift between the Zelaya administration and the business sector, supported by the US government.

The relationship between the Zelaya administration and the US government worsened since 2006 when Zelaya announced his intention to reconvert the Soto Cano airbase, known as Palmerola, into a commercial airport. Meanwhile, Zelaya became increasingly close to Chavez, who had become the Bush administration's number one enemy.

In September 2008, a few days before Congress ratified Honduras' accession to ALBA, it became known that a number of pressure groups, the same ones that plotted the coup, had begun to conspire to overthrow Zelaya. The head of the armed forces, General Romeo Vasquez, who would lead the coup on 28 June, revealed that 'certain individuals' wanted to depose the president, amid growing criticism of his friendship with Venezuela, Bolivia and Nicaragua. 'They've come knocking on our door to get rid of Zelaya,' he told local radio station HRN. 'But we're a serious and respectful institution and we respect the President as our commander in chief and we abide by the law. Some officers have received instructions to rise up against the government during meetings and in a number of emails. However, the armed forces are willing to strengthen democracy and protect the President,' he added.

The army commander insisted that 'all calls for a coup have been taken to Defence Minister Aristides Mejia and the President, following the chain of command that rules our institution.' Meanwhile, Zelaya delayed for a week the reception of the credentials of the new US Ambassador, Cuban-American Hugo Llorens, purportedly in solidarity with Bolivia.

A few months later, some of Vasquez's statements were backed by US Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, Thomas Shannon, who in March 2009, during a trip around Central America, met with Zelaya in Tegucigalpa and stated: 'Honduras is a country with a democratic tradition that has built an open and tolerant society, which has been an important factor for stability in Central America. Honduras has also been an important business partner for the United States.'

Today, Shannon and Llorens are under scrutiny due to their awareness of the coup that was being plotted and which took place on 28 June. And although the US State Department has denied their participation in the coup plot, or that of the US Embassy in Honduras and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the fact that both held talks with the coup plotters before Zelaya was ousted has cast doubt as to what exactly the US' role was in the Honduran crisis.

According to an article published by the New York Times on 30 June ('In a Coup in Honduras, Ghosts of Past US Policies'), during those talks, how the plotters would remove Zelaya from Honduras was discussed as well as who would do it, said an Obama administration official anonymously quoted. According to the source, these talks focused on 'legal ways of removing Zelaya, not on a coup'.

Cuban-Americans and the Honduran elite

The tense relationship with the Bush administration and the refusal to privatise state-run telephone company Hondutel had led to a media campaign to undermine the Zelaya administration. Zelaya also had to deal with a media smear campaign that exposed a number of corruption cases within his administration.

The case of Hondutel, a company where current de facto president Roberto Micheletti served as general manager in the late 1990s and openly supported its sale to US multinationals, became a factor that allowed the coup plotters to achieve their goal, following a widely publicised corruption scandal reported by Cuban-American Otto Reich, who had strong business interests in the telephone sector.

The balance of power weighed against Zelaya, who had assumed the presidency thanks to the support of the Liberal Party but who quickly lost the party's favour. The PL, which was closer to the right, had a very heterogeneous Cabinet. Two of Zelaya's main advisers were the left-leaning Patricia Rodas, who was appointed as Foreign Minister this year, and Enrique Ortez Colindres, until recently Foreign Minister under Micheletti's de facto government.

Ortez, together with then Speaker of Congress Micheletti, also from the right-wing faction of the PL, occupied the top positions in the government. Both had the support of the business elite and, according to many analysts, financed the coup. These business groups, mostly conservative, have a wide range of business interests and in some cases form strategic alliances.

Ortez was forced to step down on 7 July after making racist comments in which he referred to US President Barack Obama as 'a little nigger who doesn't know where Tegucigalpa is'. He was replaced by Roberto Flores. Ortez represents the far-right faction within the PL and was one of the strongest critics of Zelaya's decision to join ALBA. He has been president of the Central American Bank for Economic Integration (CABEI), UN ambassador, ambassador to France and adviser to the government of Carlos Roberto Reina (1994-1998). Ortez was involved in an arms trafficking scandal in 1999, which also involved a number of high-ranking army officers, as well as Cuban-American arms smuggler Mario Dellamico, who became known in the 1980s for trafficking arms from Miami to Honduras for the Nicaraguan Contras. In 1999, Ortez was the attorney of Longlac Enterprises, a corporation belonging to Dellamico, which owned the confiscated weapons cache.

Some of the groups accused of plotting Zelaya's overthrow are even part of the same multi-million-dollar tourism project, a public-private partnership in which the Zelaya administration was ironically also involved: Bahia Tela, considered the largest project of its kind in Central America. This huge hotel complex, located on the Caribbean coast, requires an investment of at least $150 million, although in 2005 it was estimated that the actual amount would be $300 million. A few years ago, Costa Rican weekly El Financiero published detailed information on the business groups involved in this project (28 March - 3 April 2005).

Among the business interests said to be behind the Honduran coup is the transnational pharmaceutical industry, which has established links with the Central American elite. According to the Central American Social Observatory, pharmaceutical companies in Europe and the US are implicated in the coup. More than 80% of all medicines distributed in Honduras are provided by multinationals, as 100% of the raw materials needed for their production comes from the US and Europe.

The countries of origin of these medicines are Panama, Costa Rica, the United States and Guatemala. The laboratories of multinationals such as GlaxoSmithKline and Sanofi are located in Panama, whereas Pfizer and Stein are in Costa Rica. Novartis, Bristol Myers and Aventis are located in Guatemala.

A trade agreement between the governments of Cuba and Honduras, after Honduras' accession to ALBA, included the importation of generic medicines from Cuba in order to counter the high prices that the Honduran government had to pay for medicines to be provided in public hospitals. One of the aims of the coup was purportedly to stop more of such agreements.

The Honduran pharmaceutical industry  is  controlled  by  families such as Canahuati, Kafati and Facusse, which different media outlets such as Radio Globo (which backs the Zelaya administration) regard as having supported the coup. The Facusse family also has investments in Guatemala, such as the Xacbal hydroelectric dam.

Another figure who has also been mentioned on the list of those who supported the coup is Cuban-American Rafael Nodarse, owner of the Canal 6 TV channel (set up during the 1970s). Together with his son Roberto, he is in charge of organising the IX Central American Games, which will take place this year in the Honduran city of San Pedro Sula. He is one of the major players among the families who control the Honduran media.

Nodarse, who migrated to Honduras during the 1960s, built strong ties with the armed forces and thanks to that was able to establish his business empire. He has been accused of harbouring terrorist Luis Posada Carriles, whom he met during the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, in Honduras. He has also been accused of involvement in drug trafficking and the arms trade but has never been investigated. Nodarse and his sons Roberto and Rafael belong to the conservative faction of the Liberal Party and even contributed to Zelaya's election campaign.

Nodarse has been linked to the Cuban American National Foundation (CANF), and the clandestine Swan radio station, which the CIA established on Cisne island during the 1960s to destabilise the Castro regime. The United Fruit Company had taken over the island in those years. The island was handed over to Honduras in 1971 and during the Nicaraguan counter-revolutionary war, it served as a training ground for the Contras. Today, it is a strategic area in the Palmerola complex.

This article is reproduced from Central America Report (Vol. XXXVI, No. 27, July 17, 2009), which is published by Inforpress Centroamericana.

*Third World Resurgence No. 227, July 2009, pp 30-32